Tech Companies Call For Privacy Oversight After Latest NSA Revelation

A coalition of six tech giants is calling on Congress to enact new curbs on government surveillance.

“Recent disclosures regarding surveillance activity raise important
concerns,” the online companies state in a letter to lawmakers. The companies -- Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, Facebook, Apple and AOL -- add that they would like to see “substantial
enhancements to privacy protections and appropriate oversight and accountability mechanisms.”

The tech companies were responding to this week's jaw-dropping report that the
National Security Agency had found a way to tap directly into Yahoo and Google data centers -- meaning that the NSA can gather information stored by those companies without asking them for it.

Until now, tech companies’ main response to news of NSA surveillance involved pushing for increased transparency: Google, Facebook and Yahoo went to court and sought permission to reveal more
information about the governmental requests they received. But if the NSA can simply tap into the companies' data, it doesn't matter how many official requests it made.

The companies say as
much in their letter to Congress. “Transparency is a critical first step to an informed public debate, but it is clear that more needs to be done,” they write.

Google, Yahoo and
the other signatories obviously think that these latest NSA revelations pose a threat to their business. To some extent, they're right. Some privacy-conscious consumers probably will stop using those
services and switch to other, more secure ones. In June, when Ed Snowden's revelations first broke, privacy company Abine reported that downloads of its anti-tracking software spiked by 54% while
search engine Duck Duck Go saw use surge by 55% week-over-week. (Duck Duck Go, unlike Google, Bing and Yahoo, doesn't keep logs tying users' IP addresses to their search queries.)

Still, it's
somewhat ironic that the tech companies now complaining to Congress have themselves been accused of collecting and sharing too much information about users. Consider, Google and Yahoo currently are
defending lawsuits accusing them of violating people's privacy by scanning their emails for ad-targeting purposes. Facebook has been hit with more than one lawsuit for sharing people's information in
ways they didn't intend. And AOL probably committed the biggest privacy gaffe of all, the Data Valdez, in 2006, when it publicly revealed users' search queries.

It's nice to see the truth dribble out. I wonder if anyone lost their head over it? Was that a pun? We must all remember that most of this world is built on getting money and information is the simplest way for someone to get you to give them your money w/o much effort. So the more information you put out into the world....Well the more it will come back to you in some fashion. Ultimately it will be the lack of self control that opens the door to our own demise. I think I've said enough. Thanks to the writer for keeping this issue fresh on our minds.